


Seventy-Two, Seventy-Three

by annenonymous



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Closeted Character, M/M, Masturbation, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 18:40:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3620247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annenonymous/pseuds/annenonymous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>June 13th, 2012. During the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament, the Netherlands and Germany square off once again. They're old rivals. It's a nasty match. Germany comes out on top. </p><p>Afterwards, German centre-forward Mario Gómez doesn't celebrate his victory. He thinks about Van Persie instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seventy-Two, Seventy-Three

Gómez is not the kind of person to be proud of himself, not even after two goals. The applause roars as he's finally substituted off for Klose. When Löw’s hand lingers on his shoulder he shrugs it off, and he retreats to the dugout almost sullenly, rubbing his thighs. When he sits down the others make sure not to engage with him. If Klose looks back, he makes sure not to make it too obvious. Gómez is too serious for most of them. He doesn’t think eighteen minutes before end-game is a time to celebrate.

Kroos leans in. Whispers: “That was two, Mario. Man of the match.”  
Gómez doesn’t look at him. Eyes dark, set deep in his sockets underneath his eyebrows, he remains focused on the field although he can’t do anything about the events already set in motion on it. Kroos says something else, and if he hears, if he wants to respond, he’s distracted soon enough.

It’s so beautifully executed. Right leg; the one Van Persie’s injured once, years earlier. A weakness to be exploited? If Gómez considered it a weakness once he’s learned not to underestimate the Dutch centre-forward again. Straightforward, a direct kick. The kind of shot made up of equal amounts of luck and skill. An unavoidable goal. He hawks, spits. Kroos says: “Doesn’t matter,” and Gómez doesn’t say anything. Shoots him a look.

It doesn’t matter. Not in the way that counts, anyway.

The match is won, and the Dutch players make a sneering attempt at sportsmanship. They exchange jerseys like children forced to give away a treasured drawing, and they roll their eyes and walk away. Sneijder says something, something in that pseudo-German the Dutch consider a legitimate language, and it might be a complaint or a compliment but what does Gómez care? He’s halfway down the Catacombs already, far away from his team mates punching him in the arm or ruffling his air. Far away from the press so jubilant and his coach so reservedly proud. Far away from that right leg, the one he’s injured once. 

Years earlier, a journalist had asked him what relevance being honest about being gay had in the grand scheme of football. What had he said? “They would play as if they had been liberated.” What a crock of shit.

The shoes are first, kicked off as he would kick at vermin. His shirt sticks to his body as he pulls it off, the smell of cold sweat smothering him like a blanket on a hot night. He swallows and steps out of his shorts, dumping them unceremoniously in a corner. His socks, his shin guards, and finally his underpants. He’s left naked, his muscles still as tense as if it’s the twenty-third minute and he’s running blindly towards the other side of the field, his muscles still as tense as if it’s the thirty-eighth minute and he’s unwittingly hurled into a victory lap, his muscles still as tense as if it’s the seventy-third and he’s trying to hide the hard-on straining against his shorts from Kroos’s piercing stare.

His eyes drift shut and he shakily heads toward the showers, the faraway sounds of victory and celebration reaching his ears as if he’s underwater. He gropes for the handle and turns it, turns it all the way to the left and hisses as the cold water hits his curved back. He slams his fists against the tiles and stands there, hunched underneath the steady stream of water flowing from the shower head, gritting his teeth with the water dripping from his hair pasted against his forehead. He wills his bloodstream upward again, wills his brain to resume its function as the head of the operation, but it only takes a split-second of remembering.

The right leg.  
The one he’s injured once.

And his right hand is snaking down his stomach, desire and shame knotted together deep inside of him, tightly wound into each other. His fingers pause at the hair below his navel, pretending for a moment that it’s someone else’s before he heaves a shaky sigh through his clenched teeth and presses his palm to the base of his cock, pushing it down and away to no avail.

The sounds, louder now.

He sucks in his stomach and allows his mouth to fall open, water instantly running into it but he doesn’t even notice as his hand closes around his cock, not even moving, just the assuring warmth and pressure of it as he pictures Van Persie, and that goal, and tries to imagine his horrid German accent. Tries to picture his mouth as he mumbles some half-meant compliment, tries to picture his mouth, tries.

He moves slowly but insistently. The way he plays: almost invisible but present, always lurking where he’s not expected, and then striking like lightning. Struck by lightning. Van Persie with his wife and his children, with his time in prison and his broken English, with his toothy grin and that gesture when he’s nervous in the bad way, scratching his right leg. The one he’s injured–

Gómez opens his eyes, his eyelashes sticking together, and pauses. He can’t quite tell if it’s water or tears.

_Being gay should no longer be a taboo topic._

And just as there’s a sound near the door, something that sounds like Kroos’s sing-song voice, he comes. It’s like a melting sensation in his core, his limbs finally going slack after hours of being much too on edge, and as his knees give away he sees again the muscles in that leg (the one – ) straining and bulging and hears that disappointed hiss in the crowd behind him, and his fingers tighten around himself as he sinks to the tile floor, eyes trained on the drain.

“Mario!” someone cheers, and he tries to speak, but though he opens his mouth nothing comes out but a throaty gasp, and he squeezes his eyes shut, thinking of dark hair and mischievous smiles, of professional admiration, of hypocrisy.

“Mario,” again.


End file.
